SLE372 - Evolutionary Ecology

Unit details

SLE103 and SLE204, and one of SLE111 or SLE254, plus any two level 2 or level 3 SLE-coded units

Corequisite:

Nil

Incompatible with:

Nil

Contact hours:

3 x 1 hour class per week. The first two hour classes are lectures and the third class is a discussion and interactive session with computer models of evolutionary ecology.

Content

This unit is designed to teach the fundamentals of evolution with a strong emphasis on the ecological and functional causes of evolution. In a time of changing environments it is very important to understand the functional links between ecology and evolutionary processes because that helps us to predict responses to changing ecology and has spinoffs in other fields such as drug and pesticide resistance. The approach will be a mixture of important facts, concepts, and both mathematical and computer models.

Subjects will include:

biodiversity

phylogenetics as a way of both organizing and understanding biodiversity the basic mechanisms of evolution (natural selection, genetic drift, gene flow)